A Half Dead Thing
by mirrorballsymphony
Summary: 'It turned out that the man had a dog, a half-dead thing...and when it growled at him he grabbed an axe from the butcher's table beside him, threw the dog to the ground and cut off its back legs. Just like that.' Vetinari's always bloody right, and when it comes to this case, Vimes is glad he didn't get there first.


**Taken from a passage in ****_Snuff:_**

_**'Well, there was a bit of a fracas, as we say, and it turned out that a man had a dog, a half dead thing, according to bystanders, and he was trying to get it to stop pulling at its leash, and when it growled at him he grabbed an axe from the butcher's stall beside him, threw the dog to the ground and cut off its back legs, just like that. I suppose people would say "Nasty bugger, but it was his dog" and so on, but Lord Vetinari called me in and he said to me "A man who would do something like that to a dog is a man to whom the law should pay close attention. Search his house immediately." The man was hanged a week later, though not for what he did to his dog, although for my part I wouldn't have shed a tear if he had been, but for what we found in his cellar. The contents of which I shall not burden you with. And bloody Vetinari got away with it again, because he was right: where there are little crimes, large crimes are not far behind.'**_

* * *

Carrot spotted it first, patrolling with Vimes through the market and greeting everyone in his usual friendly, good natured, bloody annoying way. Vimes kept his head down - his first patrol in weeks, and he was tired and grumpy from Young Sam's teething, and was too liable to snap at Carrot to look up.

Carrot knew this, or at least Vimes thought that he did. But nevertheless, he tapped Vimes' arm.

'Look over there,' he said.

Vimes turned and saw a man with blood on his hands and an axe lying next to him, and an inhuman screaming sound from something at his side. Already, his view was being obscured by passers-by who obviously saw something interesting, and you never wanted _that_ in Ankh-Morpork.

He started to run.

Carrot was a couple of paces behind him when he skidded to a stop, pushing away the crowd and waving his badge around like it meant something, and it was Carrot who swore first*. Vimes stood stock still, frozen in place by the tableau before him.

Dimly, sounds from the people surrounding him started to filter in.

'He just picked up the axe and chopped its…'

'Just sliced right…'

'Half dead thing, look at it. It's not been kept right.'

'Well, it is his…'

'For growling at him? He chopped its legs off for growl…'

Carrot's voice cut through them all.

'You're under arrest,' he said firmly, grabbing the man's arm and throwing the axe to one side. 'You have the right to a…'

'Don't bother with his damn rights, Carrot,' Vimes said, taking one step forward and placing a hand on the dog's chest for…what? A heartbeat? For the poor bugger to know that someone cared about it? Died from loss of blood, Vimes' hazy forensics skills would suggest, though the way the dog was screaming it might just have been the shock.

'What happened?' he said, turning around to a startled woman with a shopping basket on her arm, who took one step back. Carrot had cuffed the man, who was staying remarkably silent, and Vimes could see him dragging him away to the nearest Watch House.

'The dog growled at him,' she said nervously, glancing at the dog's blood which was still on Vimes' hands. 'And so he picked up the butcher's axe and he…he chopped the legs off it. Just chopped 'em off.'

'Who's the butcher?'

'That's me,' said a beefy looking man from behind him.

'Did he say anything to you?'

The butcher shook his head. 'No, just grabbed the axe. I was serving Mrs Cooper here and he just took it.'

'Would you be happy to provide witness statements?'

The man and woman looked at him warily. 'I'm not much of a writer,' the butcher confessed.

'You'll just have to talk.'

He smiled. 'I'm good at talkin'.' Then his eyes fell on the corpse, blood pooling around it, and he shook his head. 'Gods, what did the critter ever do to him?'

Vimes picked up the corpse and placed it carefully inside a bag that the butcher held out for him. 'Sometimes there doesn't have to be a reason.'

* * *

*Well, if you consider 'Bloody hell' to be swearing. By Carrot's terms, it should have landed him in jail.

* * *

'Did you know that dog?' Vimes asked Angua. He felt awkward asking her.

She shrugged and stared at the man who was waiting inside the cell. They were standing in the corridor outside the cells, looking in. The man was asleep, it felt like an injustice to the whole thing.

'Not really,' she said. 'I mean, I heard him sometimes on the howl, but it was always cut off.' She looked away. 'Are you sure you want me to do this, sir?'

'I want this bastard to hang.'

She looked back, incredulously. 'I'm not sure you'll get him hanging for chopping the hind legs off a dog, sir. It was butchery, yes, but not…'

Vimes' fists clenched of their own accord. 'It screamed, Angua.'

She took one look at his face, and fell silent.

Then, as Vimes watched, she entered the cell, shook the man awake and slammed the axe down on the floor in front of him, her hands shaking but - and this, Vimes thought, showed her training - not letting it show. He let her get on with it; she could usually get the most out of prisoners.

* * *

'It strikes me, Vimes, that when there are little crimes, big crimes shall surely follow.'

Vetinari was standing by the window, staring out of it onto the streets beyond. Vimes stood to attention behind him.

'Sir.'

'And that a man who will, in public, slice the hind legs off his dog…' Vetinari paused and glanced under his desk, where for so long the pungent presence of Wuffles had laid, exuding gas occasionally. 'Well, what might that man do in private, I wonder? He wouldn't stop at a dog, I am certain of that.'

'Sir,' Vimes said blankly, not willing to say that he'd been thinking the same thing.

'Follow him, Vimes. Go down to his house and have…have a nosy around, as you might call it, just to be on the safe side. You can put it under the heading of investigating a criminal, not following your gut and being a suspicious bastard, as you usually term it.'

'Good of you to say so, sir.'

'And take a couple of experienced officers. People you can trust, people who won't run away when it all gets too real.'

Vimes paused for a moment. 'Is that a result of information received, sir?'

And now it was Vetinari's turn to look blank. 'I cannot think what you mean, commander. I'm merely suggesting that you follow standard Watch practice to the letter.'

Vimes nodded, and made his own way out.

* * *

'For a bit of a disturbance, sir?' Carrot said, walking beside Vimes with Detritus on his left. Angua stood the other side of Vimes.

'Yes,' Vimes said bluntly.

'But surely there's nothing susp…well, too suspicious, about a madman.'

'Where there's little crimes, captain, big crimes will surely follow. Remember, I always say that.'

'Right, sir. Remembering that you always say that.'

There was a pause as they kept on walking. Angua held the keys for the man's house, which she had gotten off him with some not so gently persuasion.

'But I still don't get why we're going to these lengths,' Carrot started again.

'Carrot, he chopped off the hind legs of a dog, in broad daylight, because it was annoying him. What do you expect from him?' That was Angua.

'It was his dog,' Carrot tried, and Angua rounded on him.

'And? Then he really, really shouldn't have done it. What about all that where a dog is a man's best friend, eh? And he just sliced that one to pieces.'

'Angua,' Vimes said warningly. Her fists clenched and she took a breath, but didn't say anything more.

_It's this case,_ Vimes thought. _It's got us all personally. Angua because…well, that's obvious. Carrot because it's affecting Angua. Me because…_

_Because I didn't think of it first._

_Dammit, I'm supposed to be the suspicious bastard around here._

They arrived at the front door of the house and Angua slipped in the key. She nodded as soon as the door was opened, and turned to Vimes.

'Vetinari was right,' she said hollowly. 'The bastard.'

Carrot, for once, didn't mention the swearing.

'Do you need me to open dis door?' Detritus asked, gesturing helpfully with the sledgehammer.

'No,' Angua said abruptly, on her knees and fiddling with something on the floor. 'There's a door down to the cellar here. Carrot, can you give me a hand.'

'I can open it,' Detritus said.

'I don't think…'

'It's no problem.'

Vimes dove to the floor as Detritus brought the sledgehammer down on the floor and the trapdoor opened with a crash, unleashing the vile smell of what lay beyond.

'Is there a ladder?' he asked, rising up.

'There was a ladder, sir.'

Angua was peering down the hole, tears trickling down her cheeks. Carrot stood with his hand resting on her back.

'How many?' Vimes asked.

'Hard to tell, sir. There's…pieces, sir. I don't want to go into the detail.'

'How long?'

'It differs, sir. Between a couple of weeks and a year, maybe two.'

Vimes stared down into the gaping abyss and managed to contain the Summoning Dark. He didn't want to see.

'That bastard,' he muttered. 'The twisty bastard had it right all along.'

* * *

They hanged him, in the end.

The four Watch officers, even Detritus, who'd stood in a corner shaking for most of the ordeal, walked up to the lime pit afterwards and spat onto the grave. Then they walked home, each one of them trying to get the stench of the place off their skin.


End file.
